Episode 5

“Everyone roll a D20” — Erg! What a way to start! It was supposedly a “history” roll. Who’s ever heard of such a thing? History, bah, history is for Baldrick!

We are reliably informed that this town is past its prime, the fog is lifting and it’s going to be a nice sunny day. Oh joy, oh joy!

Ham and eggs and grits for breaky. Melchoir pays (this will never get old).

After breakfast, Krud remembers his maul and so we’re of to see Krag Blackhander.

Amazingly, the maul is looking good. It’s been polished and has a lovely sheen. Just lovely.

But poor old Krag appears a bit distracted. Maybe he’s learnt something about this dwarven artefact that upset him? But, we don’t really care and move on.

Krud has a swing of his shiny new toy and declares “it feels good”.

A quick polish costs 100 gp. Krud pays up.

“You can have the 100 gold back if you can help me out”, says Krag, “My 17 year-old son Dawg has gone missing and I need help to find him. He was supposed to work last night. He slipped off to The Salty Mermaid instead of finishing his work properly.”

I guess we do care and felt sorry for the bloke because without so much as a gold-piece up front, we find ourselves at the The Salty Mermaid asking about his useless offspring.

The Salty Mermaid

The Salty Mermaid is quite busy. It’s full of fishermen. But no Dawg.

Oh wait, no, we're back at The Mage’s Guild

Melchoir scarpers back to Eye on the Door place.

He yells “BLOODAXE”.

Amazingly, the door opens.

The place is full today: People reading books, people playing in their vaults, some guy is even sitting in a lounge chair.

Melchoir tries to hire another vault and blurts out a little too much information. The manager gets suspicious (so do we, but we’re not there). The manager says “there is a 10% fee on deposit. Come back tomorrow at 10am with some credentials and we can start the process”.

“This sounds like a convivial establishment. I’m happy with that, mind if I have a look around?” asks Melchoir. Yeah, he really does talk like that.

He pretends to wander around for a bit and then heads back to “The Salty Tavern” (whatever that is), completely forgetting the reason he went to the Guild to begin with.

Meanwhile back to the action at The Salty Mermaid

Krud takes out his shiny new maul and strokes it in public.

An old salty Neptune with a trident (there’s something you don’t see every day) admires the maul and gives Krud the eye.

The barman strikes up a conversation with Krudd. It turns out that Dawg was here last night after all, and had lots of money. He left late with a tattooed man and they were drunk.

The tattooed man is a tribesman from the half-moon tribe. The tribe has a camp not far out the city. How lucky is that!?

This Fisherman’s Friend ale is bloody good. We must come back for more.

Somehow, Melchoir finds us.

We hire a skip and head up river to find the half-moon tribe. Or was it down river?

Melchoir redistributes his wealth: everyone gets 10 copper, 10 electrum, 10 gold, and 20 silver pieces. We rejoice into the night... oh no... wait... no we don't. But we are grateful, we truly are. I just need those gems now...

Studying the uncommonly light gems yields… nothing. We think, maybe try again tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Today's not good for gems. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow’s always better. Especially for gems.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure why we thought tomorrow would be better for appraising my gems, but we did. There is some weird juju happening. My gems. Mine.

Full-Half-Moon

We come across some tattooed women playing in the river. Are they up to something? Who can tell? THEY HAVE TATOOS ALL OVER THEIR FACE!

“We’re here to find someone. Take us to the Full Half-Moon (chuckle, chuckle).”

And, with our natural charm, and good manners, they do.

These people live in fancy whalebone lean-tos draped in furs.

The kind women WITH TATOOS ALL OVER THEIR FACE lead us into the camp. By the central fire there are four men WITH TATOOS ALL OVER THEIR FACE gathered in a circle. This would be the "full-half-moon", I presume.

As we approached, we could see that they were looking at a horn of some sort. It looks to be a narwhale horn!

They cover it up as we approach... and we say nothing! NOTHING!

I guess we’ll just ignore the NARWHALE HORN then, will we? The NARWHALE HORN people, we’re ignoring the narwhale horn, ok?

Krudd, ever the diplomat, takes charge and engages in conversation with these tattooed barbarians.

“Hail good people!”

Krudd explains our visit.

They send off for someone called Two-Hands. Apparently, Two-Hands was in town last night. He might know something.

Krudd tries to ingratiate himself by engaging in some trade. He haggles for a fancy seal-skin cloak. He fails miserably and buys an oily-rag for 10 gp. Oh well, at least he thinks he got a bargain. I, on the other hand, had the good sense to see through the scam right away, before we even started.

Two-Hands arrives and it turns out that he did leave The Salty Mermaid with Dawg last night.

“Dawg was very drunk, I was taking him home and he lost consciousness. I left him in a ditch, as you do, and went back to the inn to get help. When we got back, he had gone,” says Two-Hands pleadingly.

Two-Hands seems genuinely worried. We know that because we used our spidy-sense on him.

On the way back to town, a strange man offers us fish.

“Only five coppers per fish”.

Krud buys five of the things. Five fish, 25 coppers! Great! Just what we want! Five smelly bloody dead fish corpse things!

I do the only reasonable thing and search inside the fish.

And... I find a black perl!

Whoot! I’m rich! I’m rich! I knew all along there would be something in them. I knew all along!

Weirdly, Krud gets unnaturally famished before lunch and just has to eat some of the fish right now, like RIGHT NOW!

Ewww, he gobbles down half of one of the giant fish. RAW! Yuk!

We drop the remaining fish off at the Red Mermaid, and head off to the spot where Two-Hands said he left Dawg.

A goblin invasion!

A goblin invasion! A goblin invasion! We find signs of a goblin invasion! Or is it a goblin footprint we find?

This wakes the boy-wolf (Dagwood) up and he is off in search of the sent of goblin.

Our mage rants on about some history this and some history that. Blah, blah, history blah.

I wonder if wolves eat owls?

Krud(d) continues to show signs of a strange, urgent hunger. It’s not right. We might have to put him down.

Meanwhile, it looks like wolf-boy may have found something...

Back to The Dubious Chronicles of Wyvern’s Keep.